


Like a Motherless Child (The Smoky Mountain Remix)

by ishie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Remix Redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's head felt hot and too tight, his brain drowning in a muddy feverish swirl of "where?" and "what?" and "where?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Motherless Child (The Smoky Mountain Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Septembers_coda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Mother's Here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/781590) by [Septembers_coda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda). 



> I tried to keep the essentials: Dean, Sam, and Sam's never-ending allure to things and people who want to protect him. 
> 
> You had such an amazing array of fics to choose from!! I kind of borrowed the name of Marian and the fire from another of your stories, but I hope they're different enough here that it's something new for you.
> 
> Thanks to B for the beta!

The only thing Sam remembered when he woke was the werewolf's claws digging into his shoulder, his hip, shredding through jacket and shirt and jeans and into the flesh beneath. The searing pain had dulled to a throb but the muscles kept firing as he tried to sit up, sending fresh new waves of nausea rippling through him. 

His head felt hot and too tight, his brain drowning in a muddy feverish swirl of "where?" and "what?" and "where?" The bed he was in smelled musty, like it hadn't been used in years. The heavy blankets pinning him to it seemed clean enough, though, no holes chewed by mice or moths, no suspicious stains, no funky stink. Sam finally managed to push them off and rolled to his uninjured side, hissing at the mistake as soon as he made it but pushing through anyway.

The room was small and cramped. A bare wood floor, with a thick layer of dust on the one windowsill and cobwebs clinging to the panelled walls. A porcelain cross with a brass Jesus stuck to it hung off-center from a nail above the bed. The room's only door, a flimsy pressboard thing spotted with dark moldy patches, was partly open onto a dim hallway with more of the cheap wood panelling and another door in the opposite wall.

"Dean?"

Sam's voice was croaky, old. It took him three tries to get out of the bed. How long had he been out? 

"Dean, you there?"

He limped into the living room of wherever they were—not another divey motel room, thank god. Not a single harvest-gold sink in sight. Behind the couch a large picture window framed a thick wooded lot that seemed to slope downward just a few dozen feet out. The Impala parked on a small gravelled area that seemed to wrap around the building. In the adjacent wall, a dusty net curtain sagged from a rod over a smaller window, and next to that was what looked like it had once been an impressive stone fireplace. Now, though, it was pitted and cracked and covered in thick black soot. At least six inches of ash covered the hearth. The ceiling above was still intact, though bubbled and charred beyond repair.

"What the hell?" A surge of nausea nearly knocked Sam off his feet as the throbbing in his shoulder and hip doubled down as if to protest the accommodations. 

Off the living room was a small eat-in kitchen. On the table, one of Dean's duffels gaped open; first aid supplies, torn wrappers, and bloodied gauze were strewn around all it. Sam tore open a packet with his teeth and choked down a handful of painkillers, chasing it with a glass of lukewarm, vaguely sulfur-smelling water from the tap.

"Ew, you're drinking that?"

It took a couple of seconds for Sam to process that Dean's voice hadn't been that high-pitched in decades. And that this wasn't even what he sounded like when he did.

"There some reason why I shouldn't?" he asked. His mind was whirling in sick panic, trying to remember if he'd seen a weapon anywhere; where the nearest exit he could fit through was; if he could break the glass in his hand before whatever it was attacked.

"Well, it's _foul_. That well water hasn't tasted right since the tannery set up. Nobody drinks that. Didn't momma tell you that?"

In the window over the sink, Sam saw a faint reflection of a small girl in a dress with a big swingy skirt. She came closer while he watched, until she was standing at the counter next to him and pulling on the hem of his shirt. He felt no ghostly chill, no creeping sense of unease crawling over his skin. Her eyes were clear and bright; her skin dark brown and nearly glowing with good health. No ectoplasms, no translucency, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a little girl in a thin summer dress with dust on one shoulder and a pucker of scarred skin peeking out from one sleeve.

"Look," she said, pointing. "There's that jug of spring water we just went and got right there. Drink that."

Sam agreed easily enough, refilling his glass under her close supervision. She nodded with satisfaction when he drank. This colder water sloshed around in his empty stomach, threatening to bring the pills right back up again. He burped.

The girl giggled.

Sam smiled down at her and put the empty glass down on the bare table. There was something he was supposed to remember, but all he really wanted to do was collapse on the couch under the big picture window. Maybe there was a board game or something they could play? But he was supposed to remember something. Something about... 

"My brother! Do you know where he went? Have you seen him? He looks a little like me, but short."

She shook her head.

"Well, not short. I bet to you he probably looks as tall as me. His name's Dean."

"Nope," she told him. "Ain't seen him. Maybe momma did. She sees everything. I bet you she can even see this."

She stuck out her tongue and waved her hands over her head, doing a little dance that involved a lot of wiggling and shaking her braids and stamping her feet on the cracked linoleum.

"Is... Is that something she isn't supposed to see?" There were other questions he should be asking: who the girl was, why she was here with him, where here _was_. But the painkillers—or the placebo effect—were already making a dent in the pain and fever-fog and Sam couldn't figure out how any of the answers he'd get would be worth the asking.

"No!" She shrieked with laughter and ran from the kitchen. 

Sam limped after her. She was kneeling in front of the fireplace, twirling her fingers through the piles of ash. He felt like a storybook giant towering over her, so he gingerly sat on the couch and concentrated on looking smaller. Less scaring-the-village-children, though she didn't seem to have a problem with his height. That, or she was fearless. He'd never been around kids much. Maybe that was normal.

"Hey, I'm Sam, by the way. I don't think I said."

"I know," she said with a shrug. She drew a sharp line through the ash and patted two small hills into shape on either side of it.

"And you're..." He let his voice trail off, hoping she'd supply the name for him, but suddenly it was there already, in his mouth. "Marian. Right? Your name is Marian, like that singer your momma likes?"

The look she gave him was sour, the same one she gave when momma told her to do the dishes after dinner. "Why do you keep saying stuff everybody already knows?"

"Where is momma?"

She shrugged again. The tin soldier she dragged through the ash had a bright blue cap and a jet-black musket eternally clenched in its tiny hands.

Sam sighed and settled deeper into the couch. His shoulder and hip hardly protested at all, but the rest of his body felt languid and dense. A heaviness pressed down on his chest and thighs, pinning him to the couch with the full weight of his exhaustion. A faint smell of charred things, of thick smoke and flickering flames, rose up around him. He waited a beat for the nausea to return, like it always did when he was confronted with fire like this, but there was nothing. Just the cool slide of fresh air over his skin and the sound of Marian's humming as she set the soldiers up for another battle on the clean-swept hearth.

"Sammy," someone whispered. "Sammy, you gotta get up. Sammy!"

"Momma said we gotta stay here, Robie," Marian told him, her voice sharp and mean. "Momma said we'll be safe if we just stay here with her."

"I know," he said, a whine creeping into his voice. She was so bossy, all the time telling him what to do. He slid off the couch and sat heavily on the wooden floor next to her. He nudged one of the toy soldiers with the toe of his shoe. It wobbled briefly before falling onto its back, trapped under the big yellow drum it played to keep the soldiers marching. It was his favorite, the one they'd painted with daddy before daddy run off, with the paint they mixed together with powders and oil and their own spit.

Marian smacked him, hard, on the knee, which was already scabbed over from when he fell on the way out to the spring that morning. "He's got it hard enough already! Don't you push him over again!"

"He's my soldier. I can do what I want!"

"Sammy, come on!" the voice said again.

"Don't you listen to him," Marian warned. For just a second her face was as hard and grey as the ashes she'd been playing in. Another blink later and she was the same bratty, bossy know-it-all she'd always been. "Don't you listen to him, Robie. If you're not here with me when momma gets back, I don't even know what she's gonna do."

Sam ran a hand under his nose and sniffed hard. He was trying to be the big brave boy momma wanted him to be, but it was so hard. It was so dark in the house without the lights she said they couldn't turn on. And his belly hurt, it was so empty. She'd been gone for days and days and it was getting colder and colder. Even Marian was getting colder and she never acted like anything bothered her.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and picked at the scabs. It was no use whining. Marian would just smack him again. When her back was turned, he scooped up the drummer and stuffed him in his pocket. The first chance he got he was going to stuff the soldier in his hidey-hole where Marian would never find him. She still didn't even know where it was, even though she looked at it every single day. It gave him a terrible thrill to know that all the treasures he'd taken from her dresser when she wasn't looking were right there in front of her and she couldn't find them.

Marian pushed the soldiers around some more before knocking them over herself and heaving out a great big sigh. "I'm going to start a fire. There's rain coming and you're already sniffling so I'm just gonna do it."

A big black hole opened up in Sam's stomach. He was angry with her for the idea, even. "You don't even know how," he sneered. 

"Do too. You just get outta my way."

She stomped over to the door and tugged hard on the knob. The door swung free of its frame with a mighty creak and she jumped after it, outside where the sun had disappeared into a dark cloudy sky beyond the trees. 

Sam scurried over to the couch and climbed up so his front was pressed against the tall back. He pushed his face against the glass, straining to see down the side of the house to the woodpile to make sure Marian was out there and not waiting to play a trick. He watched her pull a log from the stack and drop it at her feet, then go back to tug on another out to join it.

Satisfied that she couldn't see him, he dug his fingernails into the wooden frame that ran under the big window and pulled. It slid away from the glass easily, just an inch or two, to reveal the dark powdery emptiness inside the wall. The soldier jumped right through the hole and dropped out of sight, landing with a clatter somewhere down below. Sam dug his feet into the couch cushion and pushed up, trying to get his eye closer to the hole without blocking all the light. He wanted to survey his stash, but all he could see was blackness.

Outside, Marian hooted in triumph and another log thumped to the ground. Sam's breath came fast and excited as he pushed the sill back in place and dropped down to sit on the couch like nothing had happened. It was hard to keep his mouth from slipping into a grin over another successful liberation.

While Marian was still outside, the voice was in his ear again. Louder. Meaner. 

"Sam, I swear to God, you gotta wake up, man. I can't stop her if you don't wake up."

"You can't stop her anyhow. Nobody stops Marian from doing what she wants, except momma."

"I can, Sammy. We can both stop her. I just need you to wake up and help me. Momma doesn't want her to do it either. You gotta help us."

"She'll be mad at me!" he whined. He didn't want Marian to be mad at him ever. It was just the two of them until momma came back.

"She won't," the voice told him. "I promise you she won't. She's just scared and she doesn't know what else to do. We can fix it so she's not scared anymore."

"Really?"

"Really. But you gotta wake up now, before she comes back. If she starts that fire, I don't know what we can do."

"How are you gonna stop her? It's getting cold. The rain's coming! Maybe you should just let her—"

The voice yelled, "Don't argue with me! Quick, before Marian gets back, do you know if she hides things she doesn't want momma to see? Like, candies or hair ribbons she's not supposed to have, or, or whatever?"

Sam reached over the back of the couch and pressed his fingers against the window frame. 

"I don't— I can't see what you're doing back there."

Marian whooped again outside, but her voice sounded tiny and far away. Sam blinked, hard, and rubbed his eyes. The sky outside the big window was dark and stormy. The trees had flipped their leaves upside-down to greet the rain that would fall soon. Inside the cabin it was as dark as night. He smelled old smoke, like sometimes drifted up the valley from the Millers' farm when the hogs were sent to slaughter. For just a second he thought he saw a big white man leaning over him, one hand braced on the arm of the couch and the other holding a jar of some kind.

"Is it in the wall?"

Sam tried to say yes, but the word stuck in his throat. It was his secret spot, but most of what was inside was Marian's: her corncob dolls, the comb that broke in her tangled hair, the blanket momma said was too moth-eaten to be of any use. He was afraid of what the man would do to it. Would do to Marian. He didn't want to leave her; she didn't want him to leave either. Everything she did was to keep him with her, to keep him safe. She was outside right now getting wood off the pile so she could build him a fire!

He couldn't see the man anymore, not with his eyes screwed up tight, but he could feel him. Sam kicked out with his feet and scrambled away. The floor came rushing up to meet him with a wicked thump.

"Marian!" he gasped but hardly a whisper came out. His chest heaved as he struggled for breath, against a sharp stab of pain that came from all over. 

Somehow he got to his feet and pounded across the room to the door, sure the man would snatch him back any minute. "Marian!" he yelled, his voice stronger now. "Marian, help!"

The knob came off the door in his hand when he tried to turn it. It felt rough and rusty, nothing like the smooth shiny metal momma had him polish with his chores. Sam stuck his hand in the hole and pushed and threw himself through the open doorway. The wind was strong and cold, shooting stinging pricks of rain into his face. The woodpile was in total disarray, gray and wet, the neat row collapsed in places. Marian was gone.

He howled her name, still holding onto the hole in the door. Something hot and awful chewed its way into his shoulder and down the right side of his body. The smell of smoke was sharper now, nearer. He let go of the door and rolled away from the cabin. Through the big window, he saw orange flames jumping up where the couch should have been, and then the big white man came running out the door after him. He was carrying a heavy-looking bag that was almost as big as he was, and shouting.

Sam couldn't even yell, he was so scared. He tried to push up from the ground, to run, to get away before the man could get him, but his arm wasn't working right and his leg was screaming in pain.

"Sammy, come on!" the man yelled, pulling Sam along behind him as he pelted away from the cabin. The smooth grass where momma pounded out the laundry was gone, covered over with all kinds of rocks that skidded and slipped under his feet. A long, long car came up out of the rain at them, all big shiny wheels and shinier black paint.

The man wrenched open one of the doors and shoved Sam and the bag inside, then ran around to the other side and got in. He did something and the engine roared to life. Sam clawed at the door trying to find a handle to let him back out. Marian! If she wasn't outside, she must have gone back in the cabin! What if the white man hurt her? Hit her, or worse? The fire was huge and hungry. It would eat her all up.

"It's okay, Sammy, it's okay," the man kept saying. He took his hands off the wheel for a minute and pulled something out of his coat. The car shuddered to a halt, just a few feet short of the turn where daddy had waved back at them for the last time. "Here, here," the man said, shaking something and reaching over the seat to Sam with his cupped palm, "eat this and everything will be okay."

When Sam didn't reach for it right away, the man's face turned mean and his voice dropped. "Eat the salt, Sammy. Right now. Marian's gonna be fine, I promise. She wants you to be safe, doesn't she? She didn't mean for the fire to go wrong. She just wanted to keep you from being cold."

Sam could barely breathe for all his crying. He could feel Marian sitting next to him on the wide seat, her dark skin blistering from the fire and her braids turning to ash. Golden light came pouring out of the cracks that opened in her. Her hand was hot on his shoulder. She petted his head and wiped the tears off his face. _It's okay, Robie_ , she whispered. _Momma's waiting for us. She's been waiting for us all this time._

"Sammy, come on."

Marian's hand was burning through his skin now. The golden light streaming out of her was so strong it was almost blinding. _Robie, you gotta do what he says or we can't go. You gotta let him have his brother back now. We'll be okay. Momma's waiting._

"Okay," Sam whispered. He held his hand out to the man. Marian beamed.


End file.
